Subtitles and alternate language tracks in iTunes movies: A lie?

Jump ahead to 19:25 in the MacWorld 2008 keynote video and you can see and hear Apple CEO Steve Jobs discuss a new feature in iPhone/iPod touch 1.3.1. "When I'm watching films now, I've got two buttons here (Figure)," he says. "One shows me all the chapters; I can navigate through the video by chapters (Figure). And the other, if the video contains alternate language tracks or subtitles, I can turn those off and on and select the language as well (Figure)." As he says this, a clip of the Pixar movie "Ratatouille" appears, complete with both alternate language tracks and subtitles.

This sounds like a great feature. And as long-time readers of my old Nexus blog and other writings no doubt know, it's the final step towards realizing a dream of sorts: My son, Mark, is deaf. And though he utilizes cochlear implants to hear, he relies on subtitles and captioning for movies and TV shows. Right now, all of the digitally purchasable and rentable movies that are available online are absolutely worthless to him. How wonderful would it be if these movies had subtitles? It would open up a whole new world of choice for him.

Excited by this development, I immediately rented "Ratatouille" from iTunes, since that was the movie Jobs used to demonstrate this feature in the keynote. But no subtitles or alternate language tracks are available in this film, as has been my experience with digital downloads in the past. Perhaps you need to access these features from the iPhone, as he demonstrated? Nope: That doesn't work either (I see the Chapters button, but not the Language button he mentioned). OK, well maybe it's just the rental. So I purchased the movie. Again, same thing: No subtitles. No alternate language tracks. It doesn't work on the PC, the Mac, or the iPhone. I tested all three.

So what gives? Was this a lie? Is it something that's going to be rolled out in the future? And if so, how will I know that it's available? Or do I literally need to encode this movie myself--illegally, if I understand the letter of the law--via DVD and somehow embed this functionality into the movie I create? And if that really is the answer, why wasn't this made clear during the keynote?

As it turns out, you can in fact rent movies on iTunes with closed captioning. But the number of captioned movies on the service is woefully small. More important, they're almost impossible to find. Here's how you do it: Open iTunes and navigate to iTunes Store. Enable the iTunes Browser (CTRL+B), which is almost certainly not on by default: This provides a text-based way to navigate the store. Under Charts, click on Movies to reveal a list of genres on the right. Then, scan the list of movies on the bottom, looking for a tiny "CC" graphic: Those are the captioned movies (Figure).

As noted above, the number of captioned movies is pathetic. There are exactly 5 captioned movies in the "Kids" genre, only one of which my son would be slightly interested in. Other genres are even worse: There are no captioned movies at all in "Horror" and only 4 in "Action & Adventure." I bought one of those, "The Italian Job" (the 2003 version) to test.

The results were disappointing. Sure enough, in iTunes you can enable and disable captions, though there are no non-English language tracks or subtitles available. And because of this, presumably, you don't see a way to turn on captioning when you play the movie on the iPhone" The Chapters button appears, but the Languages button does not. To actually enable captioning, you have to dive into the iPhone's Settings utility. You can't do it on the fly. And once it comes on (it takes a while), the text is so small it's almost unreadable. Irritating.

Why is Apple trumpeting a feature that basically doesn't exist and is so sporadically implemented that you literally have to luck into buying the right movies? And why do I know that some Apple fanatic is going to write me and tell me this isn't technically a lie because, after all, Jobs never explicitly said captioning was available in Ratatouille even though he used that as the example? (Tools.) And here's a question I'd really like answered: Are there actually any iTunes movies with alternate language tracks available? And if so, how do we find them?

Paul, you have every reason to take apple to task - the only issue is - in your world, Steve Jobs and apple lie but Gates and Ballmer simply make innocent errors or misstatements. You never use the "L" word for them.

Yes, it has everything to do with Gates and Ballmer. Apple's performance (or lack thereof) cannot be evaluated in a vacuum. Apple has to be compared to its competitors. It's like Greenpeace complaining about Apple's environmental policies when other companies are bigger polluters.
Paul often loves to complain about Apple's offerings without any comparison to the competition. This is just another example. Another is the iPhone (where Paul points out every "deep flaw" but manages to steer clear of how other phones are clumsy beyond belief by comparison).

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with all of you. Paul was very critical of Microsoft when Vista came out both in the beta and release versions. He does flip flop a lot, I admit that. However, its not that hard to enclose subtitlesto all versions of downloaded moves.
I think Apple is being lazy about this, because the mass majority of DVD's offer subtitles or closed captioning features. This should have been standard issue with the iTunes TV and movie downloads. When using Movielink in 2005 , we had the ability to use subtitles in both rentals and purchased movies.
I think what Paul is trying to say is that Apple always does some great things, but they always fall short of the mark in some fashion. With everything going HD, why didn't the iPod include a radio or an HD-Radio function? Why hasn't the iPhone include interoptability with Microsoft email servers and corporate networks? Why hasn't Apple ever released a version of OS-X that works on non-Apple PC?
Steve Jobs's idealism and Apple proprietary centric nature is the Achilies Heel for Apple. Its this form over function mentality that prevents people from truely adopting Apple in the way Microsoft has mass market appeal. Office 2008 for Mac was just released. Windows works on just about any PC. Its not that anyone wants to hate on Apple, but Steve's almost snobbish nature makes us dislike his company with a vengeance.

Sorry cesjr,
Paul is right about this. There is no excuss for not having the demo movie up for rent in CC. I can understand everything needs to be re-encoded but we know that this movie was already re-encoded.
I could not give a *hit about Balmer, Gates or Greenpeace. But I do give a *hit about this issue. Apple needs to be a leader here.
A quick call to Paul from Apple with an apology to Mark and a refund to Paul (for the testing he had to do) along with a link download the CC version would be a proper thing for Apple to do in this case.
I would also hope Apple would share their plan to roll out CC content with Paul - so he could share it will all who need to use this service. This is has nothing to do with Windows vs Mac or what have you. Its about doing the right thing.
Yawn!

Yawn! - Actually I said Paul was right about complaining about this. Re-read my post if necessary.
Subzerohitman721 - "Its this form over function mentality that prevents people from truely adopting Apple" you mean like the iPod?

As I recall you saw a similar situation when Jobs announced iPhone ringtones. He demoed making two ringtones, both from tracks that could not be converted to ringtones by normal customers.
I suppose he really needs to put a disclaimer on these presentations of his "For demonstration purposes only."
This is by no means an excuse for Apple, but I get the feeling Jobs is given certain things to demonstrate without him actually knowing if or when they'll be available to the general public.
Jobs: "I want to demonstrate subtitles using Ratatouille."
Luser: "Yes, Mr. Jobs."

>Yawn! - Actually I said Paul was right about complaining about this. Re-read my post if necessary.
>>Jobs: "I want to demonstrate subtitles using Ratatouille."
>> Luser: "Yes, Mr. Jobs."
Okay. I could careless if this issue has anything to do with Jobs, Gates, Balmer, Greenpeace, or if you agree or disagree with Paul.
This issue is the difference between Apple and the rest. It needs to be corrected now!
Yawn!

I'll think this feature is mostly for Europe. We in Sweden for example have all our movies subtitled, And that's the way many other countries do as well.
It's the only way we consume them, Only kids movies have translated sound track (and even then there is subtitles).
The first step must be to have the feature, Now the movie studios have the possibillity to add them.
Ulf

Is it a problem with iTunes in Vista or both [Vista and Mac OS].
Also, I am setting up a new DELL Vista PC on a friend's wireless network, who also has a network printer. Any advice or warnings? He wants iTunes as well.

cesjr - To answer your question... Yes.
The iPod does have a lot of form over fuctionality issues that Apple should have addressed. The FM-Radio issue was a no brainer. Many functions of a PDA should have been done way back when the first iPod came out. A connection port for additional functionality should have been the second no brainer.

Just a followup. The Dell XPS 410 Vista setup went smooth as can be. It's a pretty sweet machine for only a 2.4 GHz quad core. [and only $1000 with 2GB RAM and 20 in ws monitor with vid cam]. So, my first Vista experience is a good one. Dang, it reminds me of Leopard! Office 2007 was very nice as well.

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